"GBJBBN GROW THE RUSHES-O"

the lady of the house (which could not have been difficult, for she
was charming and frail. Mother and Father were always tolerant
of moral frailty for the sake of charm and good company—and
what did they care, being themselves so faithfully and happily
married!) Too late! I had already been borne off to Switzerland,
and all that the frail lady could do was to introduce him to my
married sister— Where at that very moment, he had arrived to
spend the week-end with his future in-laws. For he was, she wrote,
absolutely determined to marry me the moment I came home.
And so he might have, for there was nothing particularly wrong
with him, except that he had a long nose and was not very
intelligent. And this description of his Romeo-awakening to love
at first sight and his steadfast determination to wait, whatever
befall, for his undowered little bride from the Waiferage, coincided
with the scenery of Lac Leman, the snowy crests of the Dent du
Midi and the Rochers de Naye, and the whole range of the Jura
Mountains opposite, rosy against a sunset sky, white sails across the
water, reflections of Chillon dipping and wavering, and (from the
Kursaal) the soft lilt of a waltz refrain by Lehar, by Strauss, by
Fall...
All my soreness was healed in a moment. It was all so beautifully
in the Rakonitz family tradition: "That one and no other", my
aunts and great-aunts used to repeat, when they described with
animation and innocent vainglory how their husbands saw them
and fell for them like a ton of bricks—"That one and no other!"
Leslie ... lappingwavesbeneathmy window ... In the early spring
we were to go back to England * . . Then we would be married,
he and I (and there would be no need for me to Renounce my
Career, as Mr. Beerbohm Tree had still not made'a sign).
And indeed we might have been, as I said before, but for a
lack of foresight on the part of my ardent lover when on every
fine afternoon for three months he had upset my father's tea-
kettle ... a far more serious business than his apple-cart! Lord
Ullin and the Chief of Ulva's Isle were nothing to it, nor Young
Lochinvar who swam the Esk River for ford there was none:
"Then spake the bride's father, his hand on hig^sword" ... All
no use; you may be eligible, you may be respectful, you may do
everything in your power to placate the hard-hearted parent of a
beloved who. is still below the age of consent, but if you have once
got it wrong, as wrong as LesKe and his "cigar" tearing up and
down the river reach between Boulter's Lock and Cookham, you
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